


To Every Man A Damsel Or Two

by Daegaer



Series: To Every Man a Damsel or Two [1]
Category: Bible - Fandom, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Gen, Midrash, Tanakh - Freeform, iron age Israel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-09
Updated: 2009-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl is taken captive in a raid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Every Man A Damsel Or Two

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5. The title is taken from the song of Deborah in Judges 5. Thank you to [](http://puddingcat.livejournal.com/profile)[**puddingcat**](http://puddingcat.livejournal.com/) for her swift beta!

  
In the north of the land, where men's Hebrew is harsh and tinged more than a little with the language of the cities of Aram, a raiding party from Damascus fell upon a small village. The men and the boys were on the hills with the flocks, and only old men and women were there to greet the fate the soldiers decreed.

Deborah hid in the midst of her mother's loom, her eyes round with terror as she watched the men do what they did to her mother and her sister, and then drag them away. When the screams had stopped, and the rays of light coming in the broken door had moved from one side of the room to the other she crept out to run up the hill to the safety of her father, not caring what beasts of the fields might be waiting. They would be kinder than the men of Aram, she thought.

At the edge of her village she shrank back from the sight of a soldier pissing against the last house, and turned to flee back the way she had come. With a surprised oath he let the hem of his tunic fall, and was upon her in a few strides of his longer legs. She bit his hand as he turned her about and was cuffed across the face.

"Are there more of you?" he demanded, and, when she could only sob in fear, muttered, "She's cleaner than the other sluts, at least." Dragging her behind him, he took her to where the raiding party was readying to leave, stolen sheepskins and grain loaded upon the backs of soldiers and desolate captives alike.

"Another one?" a man with a sack of grain asked. "Put her with the others."

"And have men like you on her when _I'm_ the one who claims her?" her captor said. "No." He picked up a jar of oil, already tied with cords, and put it upon Deborah's back. "Here, girl, make yourself useful."

They walked at as fast a pace as they could away from the village. Deborah saw her sister with the captive women, but caught no sight of her mother. She must have been too old to take as a slave, she thought, they must have let her go. She banished all other thoughts from her mind until they had walked for hours and it was dark. Then, in the distance, she saw firelight, and oxen to draw carts. She stumbled into the little camp with everyone else, and numbly obeyed when she was told to load her jar of oil onto a cart. Then the soldiers stretched, and looked relaxed, flinging themselves down around the fire as an older man, who walked with a limp, brought bowls of food to them from a pot he had been tending. Her captor did not sit to eat, taking her wrist again and pulling her to a tent that stood in the centre of the camp. He dropped her arm and clapped his hands politely.

"Is my lord Naaman within?" he said. "My lord's servant would say a word."

After a moment the tent flap twitched open and a man whose face was heavily wrinkled with age, though his cheeks were as beardless as a boy's, came out.

"He is resting," the man said, in a voice that was neither deep nor high. "What is it you want?"

"A gift for my lord, to keep him warm till we return to the city," Deborah's captor said, shoving her forward. "Let my lord Naaman know that his servant Ahazbaal gives him this gift, let him know his servant prays for my lord's health –"

"What would he want with an Israelite whore?"

"She's a virgin, or so it seems likely. She's not been flung on her back in the mud this day at least, and even the backwards hill dwellers do not marry their daughters off so young. Do not men say that the virginity of a woman is a certain cure – "

"All right, all right," the older man snapped. "I'll tell him. Leave the girl, and thank you."

Deborah whimpered as she was shoved into the tent, her new captor letting the flap fall behind them.

"Why that man must plague us – " he murmured, more for his own ears than hers, it seemed. There was a cough from deeper within the tent, and he sighed. "That son of a fool had to wake him. Come on, girl." He lifted an inner flap, and Deborah blinked in the light of the lamps. There was a carpet upon the ground, and a raised pallet where a man was slowly sitting up.

"They're back, my lord," her captor said. "All is well."

"I should have been there," the man said, his voice young though tired. His face was almost entirely hidden beneath folds and swaths of fabric, only his eyes visible.

"Another time. Ahazbaal sends you a gift –"

"I heard. He wants his captaincy very much. I don't need a woman."

"Give her back, then."

The man laughed, a sound that ended in a tearing cough. "He would think he has offended me, and would dog me even more."

"Let me get you some food, my lord, and your medicine. You can think what to do about the girl – was Ahazbaal not right, about the curative properties –" the older man said, letting his voice trail off suggestively. He glared at Deborah. "Do as you're bid, you hear me?" Then he was quickly gone from the inner part of the tent.

The man beckoned Deborah closer. He was wearing gloves of fine, thin leather, she saw. When he stood, he was taller than the men of her family, and his grip upon her shoulder was strong.

" _Are_ you still virgin?" he asked.

She nodded convulsively, her eyes filling with tears as he put a hand under her chin to tip her face up.

"Not repulsive to the eye," he said absently. "I forebear to force my company upon my wife; she is delicate and gently raised," he said, and Deborah saw the skin about his eyes move as he smiled. "But you are not my wife."

She flinched back, crying openly as he stepped towards her.

"Please, sir, don't!"

"I could be the most handsome man in the world," he said, taking hold of her firmly. "Don't you want to see?"

"Please!"

He looked down at her, and then dropped his hold. Not looking her way, he sat upon his bed and was silent. The older man came back, after a little, with a steaming cup in one hand, and white, clean cloths in his other. The smell of warm wine and herbs rose into the air. He tipped a little of the liquid into a bowl that stood upon a small table.

"While that's cooling, you can drink the rest," he said, looking sidelong between the silent man and Deborah. "My lord? I need to wash your face."

The man sighed and began to unwind the fabric from about his head. His skin was reddened and raw, his beard in unsightly patches cut into by bare, ulcerated flesh. He sipped at the cup as the older man dipped a cloth in the bowl and washed the wounds as gently as if he were washing a newborn baby, whispering and crooning to his patient as if he were in truth the smallest of boys brought low by a scabbed knee.

Deborah covered her face with her hands and sank to the floor, cast down too far to properly bewail her fate. Her new master was a leper.

  
  
[Image source](http://freegroups.net/photos/The-Coloured-Picture-Bible-for-Children/)


End file.
